Developments

Pentagon wasn’t playing

Pentagon Dark’s battle against the Black Lotus Triad took up the entire hour. (Helpfully, the introduction recapped the build up to this feud and nothing else.) Pentagon faced the three new women one by one. Doku tried to strike with Pentagon, and quickly paid the price. Pentagon brutally destroyed her for a long period of time before Doku was able to mount a comeback. Doku landed a famous elbow drop, but went for it again and was caught in the armbreaker.

Yorei found more success with speed and traditional moves, then even beat an off balance Pentagon around the ringside area. (She tried to use the ring bell on him, with comically soft results.) Pentagon was able to turn it around once they got back in the ring, smiling Yorei made one more charge, but was caught right in position for the package piledriver. She was done, but Pentagon made sure to break her arm too.

Hitokiri had the best plan, sneaking in behind Pentagon, dropkicking him out of the ring, and then taking him out first with a moonsault, and then a tope. This was the most back and forth of the matches, the longest, and maybe most violent. Hitokiri even dove off Dario’s office (the first woman to do so, which might be a bigger trophy than winning the title in Lucha Underground.) Pentagon tried to break her arm, but instead was beaten by Hitokiri’s Far East Destroyer for the second time.

elbow drop did look great

The final match, with Black Lotus, never really took place. Lotus decked the referee before he could call for the bell. Yorei & Doku returned to help Lotus and Hitokiri break Pentagon’s arm. Pentagon was too worn down to fight back. As soon as they did, Dragon Azteca appeared on the stairs. Azteca came to the ring and, despite their antagonistic history, Azteca & Lotus didn’t fight. Lotus took the Triad away while Azteca grabbed Pentagon’s good arm, and broke that too. Pentagon broke both Azteca and Lotus’ arms at Ultima Lucha 2, and they both broke his arms tonight. Vampiro, who’s been thrilled by the violence (in general and to Pentagon Jr. in particular) was very pleased by the outcome.

That wasn’t the last of Vampiro. The show closed with a shot of Prince Puma waking up in a half opened casket, with a demonic Vampiro looking over him. Vampiro told Puma to come with him as the show ended.

simple spots can look vicious

There were no other matches on the show, but a couple of other vignettes. Catrina ran into Jeremiah Crane, who seemed hopeful Ivelisse would return in time to face Catrina as Ultima Lucha 3. Catrina wasn’t there to really talk about that, but the necklace Crane’s been wearing (one that’s been unremarked upon until this point.) Catrina claimed the stone in the necklace was from her Stone, and “his flesh” was here for her; he was still in love with Catrina. Catrina declared she was in love with someone else. She could’ve meant Mil Muertes or Fenix by that, and she could’ve meant some ancestor of Crane was in love with her. As with most Catrina segments, the truth wasn’t really clear, but it was accurate enough to leave Crane uncomfortable.

We did briefly see Dario Cueto, attempting to make the obvious match from Aztec Warfare 3: his brother Matanza getting a title rematch against Johnny Mundo. Matanza loudly bellowed he didn’t want that, much to Dario’s confusion. Matanza wants revenge on Mysterio instead, revaling he’d bloodied his fists by pound the wall, and used the blood to draw a question mask. Dario was freaked out. It was that kind of episode.

Thoughts

Vampiro’s occupied and delighted all episode by the violence. Both just the existence of the violence, and that it happens to be his old estranged student Pentagon. We’re meant to be a little concerned by his behavior. Striker’s the voice of the writers, and his line was more a mission statement of what we were supposed to feel. I was most of the way there. It was definitely violent and it was definitely disturbing.

Near the end of the show, I wrote about how this episode would likely be more polarizing than even Sexy Star winning. I got some push back on that, and it’s not with out merit. If you’ve found yourself uncomfortable with men on women violence, you probably have not made it to episode #80 of this series. (Though, I’d expect – just like with the Sexy Star win – those who did give up on this show to react to this as validation for their decision.) Those who are left have made either no issue with it at all on a scripted television show, or have decided the overall positives of the show outweigh the negatives. I think I started out in the first category and moved to the second somewhere along the line, and then felt myself moving past that a bit tonight.

lands the tope and avoids the stairs

I know these are all trained skilled professionals. I know the women would and probably have taken the same level of punishment in matches against other women as they took from Pentagon. The rational part of my brain knows Pentagon and Doku performed an excellent looking superkick spot, and still the irrational part is not all entertained by seeing that man kick that woman very hard. This is a ruthlessly rational website, and yet that’s not the part of the brain that’s winning this argument.

The match with Yorei was the most resembling a normal wrestling match (and, thanks the comedic bell shot, definitely the least violent.) The opener with Doku, and large portions of the fight with Hitokiri, were disturbing and meant to be so. The best art leaves you a little disquieted. It’s a too much to call an episode of Lucha Underground art, but they definitely wanted to get feelings out of people and they surely succeeded.

One bit I’m sure they wanted to get out is Pentagon, at least up until the end of this episode, was meant to be the bad guy in all of this. Striker had the unenviable task of trying to portray the rabid Temple crowd as secretly trolling Pentagon by loudly chanting his catch phrase. I’m not sure a single person bought into it, but it was obviously a way to prepare the audience for both Black Lotus and Dragon Azteca getting their revenge without making them into the bad guys. (This might be the first time Azteca has actually succeeded at something since the trios title win!) This was Pentagon’s past catching up to him, and hopefully he’s reborn without baggage when he comes back. The Puma/Vampiro skit suggests he (or we) won’t be that lucky.

maybe the most brutal moment

In a more strictly wrestling perspective, Pentagon took the loss and had his arms broken, and he still seems more over than when he started the night. The deadliest man has been crippled twice in two seasons and still comes across as ferocious in the process. And, while all three women did fine for themselves (and looked more gifted than “the best athlete in Lucha Underground, Sexy Star”), Hitokiri shined brightest. She’s obviously a superstar, they realized it enough to make sure she was the one who didn’t get her arm broken, and I hope they do whatever they can to get her back for Season 4. (Sadly, it’s one match an out for Season 3.)

I liked the Crane/Catrina segment, if only to look forward everyone else trying to make head or tails out of it. If El Rey had the budget for these things, they ought to cut together a special of Catrina’s scenes with in between explainers to help people out with the plot. (Or, maybe a fan should do it, if it was possible to do those sort of things on YouTube without getting a takedown notice.) Matanza came across menacing in his promo, though the bloody hands might be some unfortunate foreshadowing. The Puma/Vampiro bit to end was a nice bit of weirdness, and probably an intentional call back to Catrina/Mil reawakening scene in episode 1. Coming back from the dead has it’s consequences.

I didn’t watch the card. It seemed OK. The deal with Pierroth remains weird.

Diamante Azul is off all cards. Volador replaces him Saturday. Atlantis is in on Sunday. Not sure if it’s an an injury or he’s gone back to France (he indicated he wouldn’t be going back any time soon on his last Informa appearance.) Forastero also replaces Sangre Azteca on Sunday.

Lucha Underground has revealed the names of the Triad: Doku (Kairi Hojo), Yuri (Mayu Iwatani), Hitokiri (Io Shirai – or Oyuki if you have a deep memory of short term AAA gimmicks.) The clip they’ve released appears to be the open of the show, which leads into Pentagon Dark versus Doku. (Also, Vampiro telling scary campfire stories.) There’s no other match hinted at, which suggests the gauntlet may last the whole hour. I’m just not sure how that’ll work; if they go one match per segment, they’re still short at least a segment. Maybe there’s another match or surprise coming, but I generally suspect they’ll catch up with a lot of other people in cut scenes.

Lucha Underground EVP Eric Van Wagenen was on last week’s Masks, Mats & Mayhem for about the first half of the show. He was very excited for this week’s episode, saying it’s a rare episode where he watched the live cut of the show the same night it happened because he just wanted to see it again. For him, it’s one of their “top two or three” episodes. They love the Stardom women. DeJoseph saw them at the first Stardom USA show and call Van Wagenen raving: “I just saw the three greatest female Japanese wrestlers, and one of them (Io) is the Japanese Fenix. You’ve got to check them out.” Van Wagenen went the next day to see the second show, was similarly impressed, and tried to sign them right away. I had thought they were only used for a limited time because the travel/cost, but Van Wagenen says he was told their schedule was already pretty much full. Shirai, Hojo, and Iwatani happened to be coming over this weekend for a convention, so they worked the scheduled around it.

(Mia Yim/Jade and Santana Garrett were mentioned as two others LU tried to sign off those Stardom shows. I think they came up before.)

There was a fair bit of talk about the Sexy Star title win and loss. To his knowledge, Sexy was not the long term original plan, but something that came up “fairly close to the match.” Chris DeJoseph and Chris Roach dropped the idea on him, he asked “you know we’re going get shit on for doing this, right?”, they did, and they went with it. The general idea they don’t want to ever be playing it safe: “We’re not traditional, and we don’t want to be traditional.” Once they decided to do a title match, it was always meant to be a one episode thing, they didn’t have cold feet and change their minds or anything. Van Wagenen’s feeling is the fan reactions the last couple weeks was about what they expected, but more towards the positive side, and they figure/hope that if you don’t like that, there’s something else they’re doing that’d keep you watching.

That did leave me – and the hosts – with one big question: if Sexy Star was a late decision, who was supposed to be champion? Van Wagenen was evasive on that, only saying they had to change the first half of the season because of “injuries and other travel issues.” Angelico & Ivelisse are the most obvious injured people, and the hosts pressed about Ivelisse. Van Wagenen thinks the fans would’ve bought into it, and the Season 2 opener was testing the waters for it, but didn’t seem to think it was the plan.

(The travel issue might have been related to Taya based on a later discussion, or it might have been more people. Travel/immigration comes up again when talking about a discussion about who’s really dead, so maybe it was a Daga joke?)

The other thing that came up about the title change was the shot of the four women in the front row cheering for Sexy Star right at the finish. Plenty of people, myself included, wondered if they were plants. Van Wagenen’s explanation is they were the wife of a cameraman and her three girlfriends, in Los Angeles for a bachelorette party. They were on VIP guest passes, and they were moved to a camera friendly position as part of a normal policy of trying to make the crowd look as diverse as possible on TV. (That’s a thing you can do when you don’t charge for tickets.) Van Wagenen were not paid to be there, and the show generally can’t afford to pay to cast people as plants if even they wanted to do that. Later, when talking about the camera people who love to work on the show for the experience, Van Wagenen mentions an Emmy award winning cameraman turning up one weekend to ask to film the show, but they had no room in their budget to pay him. (In that case, the camera guy still wanted to work for free, and they used the footage for some of the “previously” show opens.)

The big picture question is when Season 4 will be taped. That’s still up in the air. It won’t be January, and the closest to a date is Van Wagenen saying “Ideally, we’re taping in the spring”, to avoid taping in the hot summer. He was careful with his words, noting a lot of things are in the air. He made it clear he expects the show will return for season 4, but as of yet they don’t have a pick up or a set budget and don’t expect to have that by the end of this year. They can’t work on taping dates until that happens.

I’m already cribbing too much, so I’ll cut if off there. You should go listen to the podcast for the stories about Mil Muertes punching Van Wagenen at the last LU live event and why there were so many Rabbit Tribe vignettes.

Kahn-Del-Mal promoted the upcoming Chilapancingo taping as “the last one before Guerra de Titanes.” My guess has been AAA would start 2017 with their usual year end show (which I guess is now the usual year start show) and that seems to be happening. The date and location is still unknown; it was 01/22 in Mexico City this year.

CMLL’s health announcement with the senate turned out to be participation in a campaign against prostate cancer. Hechicero & Estrellita represented CMLL. The cancer is currently not discovered/treated until it’s in an advance state for 75% of Mexican men, so they’re working on prevention and awareness in a campaign starting next year. Hechicero says his father has fought this cancer for 20 years.

Bandido sees his first season in Elite as improving from making a lot of errors in his debut to improving enough to win the welterweight title match in the end. (That generally would be true if not for the harsh ending to the title match.)

Semimain is a rematch; not sure if Ephesto/Maya has a better chance than Ephesto/Idol but who knows. Fourth match should be fun. Principe Diamante gets booked two straight weeks, which maybe justifies working all year for a bodybuilding contest.

Like this:

What happened: OGT won the titles by DQ. Tirantes was helping them all match, but actually fairly ruled the DQ since the Apaches got involved and attacked him. (This might have been a Zorro plan, but everything Zorro says confuses me.) Psycho Clown is now losing to the likes of Murder Clown.

What was good: Nothing. This show is in a dry spell for matches and doesn’t seem to be getting better any time soon.

They’re setting up another Valiente & UG match, which means Valiente is probably going to resume losing NWA Middleweight championship shots around 12/12. (Or they could just make it non-title.)

Like last night’s Arena Puebla show, last week’s Tuesday show had a title match so they’re resetting back to square zero. It’d be more entertaining if there were more angles going on so everything didn’t reset every few weeks, but I’m uncertain if CMLL’s concerned about being entertaining.

CMLL’s preview promotes the show as Pierroth against his sons, which befuddled me this morning because Pierroth isn’t listed on the poster. It appears Pierroth has taken Mephisto’s place on the show. CMLL’s switched Pierroth out of matches with his sons before, so it wouldn’t be too big of a surprise if another change was made. As it is now, Mistico, Dragon Lee, and Angel de Oro face Pierroth, Vangellys and Shocker in something that doesn’t seem like a great mix of people. The semimain is Blue Panther, Rey Cometa and Guerrero Maya versus Ripper, Luciferno and Ephesto (who’d make the most sense to move up instead of Pierroth, though this match would suffer.)

The rest of the show is the usual mix of random matches. The show opens up with Bengala & Leono taking on Apocalispis & Grako. Astral returns to CMLL action, teaming with Electrico & Ultimo Dragoncito versus Mercurio, Pequeno Olimpico and Pequeno Nitro, which might be the best match on the night. Fuego faces Arkangel in a lightning match; Fuego should win, but recent Tuesday booking suggests he won’t. The fourth match is Star Jr., Oro Jr., and Pegasso versus Sagrado, Olimpico, and Misterioso Jr.

First IWRG show in two weeks due to not running mid week and Chairo running last Sunday. (No mid week show this week either; maybe we won’t get another one until next year.) IWRG seems to be building towards Pantera I/Killer Jr. as a big year end match, which is one of the least exciting and most random matches to make. It’s a far way from Trauma I/Canis Lupus. Imposible & Relampago may have a better match (both here and the title match they’re building towards), though Relampago doesn’t have a history of great matches.

The bottom of the poster mentions fans can vote for the mejor luchador of 2016 (in person), with the award going out on the annual year end party. It’ll be on 12/21 this year.

Like this:

IWRG didn’t run a show. Monterrey didn’t air. I pulled the Crash off the feed after the fact and split into matches, but you can still watch it on their website. I couldn’t figure out when PROESA was taped, and I accidentally flipped the power off on my computer during the show, so I just left it in one chunk.

Like this:

Lucha Memes (SUN) 11/27/2016Arena Naucalpan [+LuchaTV, Black Terry Jr. (Flickr), R de Rudo]
1) Laredo Kid b Rey Cometa [falls count anywhere]Very good match. Laredo Kid asked for a title match against Cometa after the win.
2) Arez, Astral, Belial, Impulso b Alas de Acero, Aramis, Iron Kid, Shockercito and Freelance, Pantera I, Sádico, Último DragóncitoSeems to be setting up a cage match with the non-CMLL minis.
3) Negro Navarro b Puma Kinglucha clasica, Navarro submitted Puma.
4) Star Jr. DCOR Soberano Jr., Dragón Leenone of the wrestlers were happy with the results
5) Felino b Dr. Cerebro [el privilegio]Felino won when the referee allowed Tiger to interfere and foul Dr. Cerbero as his privilege (rule exception), but Felino had already used his privilege.
6) Atlantis b Alberto Dos Rios, Magnífico, Último Vampiro, Marchitas, Black Metal, Baby Star Jr., Zoy Raymunda, Avenger, Astrolux, Drako, Gato De Ecatepec, Juan el Ranchero, Súper Chiva, El Monje, Mano Negra, 19 1/2 [Memes Rumble]17 names (though 21 came out, so probably missing a few.) Atlantis (winner) and Mano Negra were the big surprises.
7) Valiente DQ Black Terry [super libre]DQ in a super libre when Valiente faked a foul
8) Hechicero b Caifan [NWA LH]This was set up originally as three fall match, but Hechicero also wanted to make it a title defense. Caifan and the commission agreed. First fall went to a draw and Hechicero won the second fall (and it seems as though they didn’t do a third fall since Caifan couldn’t win the title at that point.) First defense.

Haven’t seen a lot of reviews of the shows yet – I think I need to start looking more places? – but my impression is the first and last matches might have been the best. Atlantis showing up in the Memes Rumble and winning the whole thing was a genuine cool surprise. Caifan seems to have bled a lot in the main event, and Terry did as well in his match. Dragon Lee was wearing a Rush/Lee fused match; is this a Pokemon situation where a Dragon Lee can evolve into a Mistico or a Rush depending on what item they’re holding? I’m not sure the world is ready for a second Rush.

Attendance looks good, though maybe not the sell out past Chairo shows have been. +LuchaTV was posting post match interviews during the show (go down to 226 on the playlist for the new stuff) and will post highlights soon, though you can find video clips now on Facebook if you look around.

CMLL has an ordinary show in Puebla tonight. Last week had the Polvora/Dragon Lee match, and they built up nothing particular for this week. (Astral’s injury seems to have derailed whatever they were planning with him and Mini Joker as well, though maybe it’ll be back next week.) The main event is the Sky Team versus Gran Guerrero, La Mascara and Ultimo Guerrero, something similar to a trios title match they just did. The semimain has Diamante Azul, Johnny Idol, Maximo versus Kraneo, Ripper and Shocker. There seems to be a monthly match in Puebla that looks like it’d be good except for the never changing Stigma/Skandalo feud; this months match has Esfinge & Fuego versus Puma & Tiger. The second match has Amapola, Seductora, Tiffany versus Estrellita, Princesa Sugehit and Sanely. The locals are only in the opener, with Black Tiger, Meyer and Vega versus Ares, Guerrero Espacial and Sombra Diabolika.

And Triton is back in Mexico, as he had mentioned. This is the locals only show, so he’s being booked thru them and not back with CMLL entirely, though he’s promoted as the big deal on the show. The Leon/Neutron feud resumes after a week off.

I saw the last half of this show, you can see the whole show still on their website; there’s one camera person who wasn’t into moving much, so set your expectations lower than you might otherwise. The fourth match looked good and it sounded like the second match was good. Tiger/Flamita wasn’t much due to Tiger’s injury. Main event probably won’t hold up after the fact but definitely entertained the crowd. Teddy Hart and Jeff Hardy both acted strange, but when do they not? The building appeared to be sold out or close to it, better than the prior show, and Jeff & Rey were the two huge stars to this crew. (Nicho is also more over here than anywhere else.)

I’m alright with them setting up another La Mascara/Volador singles match as long as it’s on the show I don’t have to watch. (Though, as much as I don’t want to see them, Volador singles matches are the kind of things they should be putting on VOD.) Caristico losing in a meaningless second match is so weird.

DTU announced Kevin & Jimmy will face Gallego & Mr. Condor in a hair match on their 12/15 DTU iPPV. That’s one of the matches set up on the Arena Aficion show earlier this month, and now we know it’ll be a match where just one person loses their hair three people lose their hair!. The iPPV plug does mention the show will air live, which will be exciting and hopefully not fraught with problems. On a DTU show tonight, Ovett beat DTU Consgrado champion Sharlie Manson in a multiman match, and challenged for a title match on 12/15 as well. DTU has a show on the 2nd in Oaxaca, and I’m guessing the full lineup is revealed after that.

In Guadalajara, Rey Star lost his mask to Kal-El in a ruleta de la Muerte. Rey Star is Juan Carlos Torres, 16 years a wrestler.

Winner of the main event fourway faces Bandido at some point. That’d be fun, but the match itself should be fun even if nothing else happens. It does seem like Elite’s letting the champions do whatever they want with their belts in between the seasons, which isn’t seen rarely with the AAA & CMLL belts.

We’re kind of in a fuzzy area about what lineups and results I should include – this show might end up getting recorded and someday turning up on Powerbomb.TV. It also might not, or might not show up for a while. I’ve backed away from covering stuff on this part of the blog that’s not at least watchable or interesting, because there just doesn’t seem to any point to it, but now there’s plenty of stuff I can get your hopes up for maybe no reason.